Comment by nondeveloper | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nondeveloper | Hacker News Reader

America is and has always been predicated on the idea that the ordinary person has the capacity to make decisions that guide the republic, either as elector or elected. This idea is the basis of all democracies, generally.

Whenever I read that people “aren’t educated” enough or are “unduly influenced” by media, e.g., newspapers, television, or social media, I like to remind myself of this.

I notice that there is, and maybe always has been, a vocal group of people who believe that we should only elect and appoint experts, highly-trained specialists in their area of government. Heinlein reminds us that “specialization is for insects”.

I’ve come to know many politicians in the past few years, some of them nationally prominent. And I can say without hesitation that the average person is as qualified to make decisions about governance as the average professional politician.

Crowds can be pretty smart. Not faultless, but smart. That idea has been fashionable for a few years now but it’s definitely not new. Its implementation has changed from democracy to democracy. But as a general principle it’s been broadly and effectively applied.

> America is and has always been predicated on the idea that the ordinary person has the capacity to make decisions that guide the republic, either as elector or elected. This idea is the basis of all democracies, generally....

> I’ve come to know many politicians in the past few years, some of them nationally prominent. And I can say without hesitation that the average person is as qualified to make decisions about governance as the average professional politician.

The idea that Facebook is bad for democracy doesn't contradict that idea. For anyone to make good decisions, they need good information, and the problem with Facebook is that it amplifies lies and disinformation.

> I notice that there is, and maybe always has been, a vocal group of people who believe that we should only elect and appoint experts, highly-trained specialists in their area of government. Heinlein reminds us that “specialization is for insects”.

I don't think that's what being advocated for. What specialists are good at is providing accurate information in their specialty. Often different specialists will disagree.

In many cases, democracy should be about the people choosing which specialists to listen to and where the balance will be between them when they conflict. It shouldn't be about ordinary people trying to replace specialists (e.g. lets have a vote of non-engineers to determine how big the support beams for the new bridge should be).

> I don't think that's what being advocated for. What specialists are good at is providing accurate information in their specialty. Often different specialists will disagree.

This is an interesting point insofar as the second and third sentence seem to contradict each other. Am I over-simplifying?

A translation of what I expressed above is that common people have common sense and that common sense inoculates us from misinformation. It’s an imperfect response, but effective.

What Facebook is and does, at least in terms of spreading misinformation, is not new. Newspapers were that for a long, long time and, arguably still.

> This is an interesting point insofar as the second and third sentence seem to contradict each other. Am I over-simplifying?

It's not a contradiction. For instance: maybe you have an specialist (a consensus epidemiologist) that says if we don't do A, B, and C, then N thousand people will die. Maybe you have another specialist (an consensus economist) that says if we do those things, it will cost the economy M billion dollars. Maybe you have other specialists in those fields that say other things, but are fringe figures rather than consensus figures.

Now the political figure or ordinary person has a menu of options, and has to make the trade-offs between them.

I was thinking of specialists within the same specialty disagreeing. Read that way it is a contradiction but it’s now clear that’s not what you meant. I feel the point still stands!

When I read your first reply I hadn’t considered specialists in different specialties disagreeing on the same problem or issue. But that seems to further bolster my point, at least as it relates to the distance between common sense and specialized knowledge.

> I was thinking of specialists within the same specialty disagreeing.

That's a thing too, which I was trying to get at with my comment about fringe specialists. But it's not like every specialty is homogeneous (especially true in something like economics), so decision makers may need to choose between one camp or another of some specialty.

The thing I was arguing against was the now prevalent behavior of dismissing any specialist view that contradicts what you would have done in the first place. Common people should have a say in a democracy, but if that democracy is going to function, those common people need to understand the limits of their knowledge and understanding, which means they need to respect the knowledge and understanding of specialists.

I want to go back to something I forgot to respond to earlier:

>>> A translation of what I expressed above is that common people have common sense and that common sense inoculates us from misinformation. It’s an imperfect response, but effective.

I used to think that too, but I think that's turning out to be far, far less true than anyone would have hoped. That's proven by how prevalent and influential misinformation and disinformation have shown to be. For instance, by the support of totally baseless claims of election fraud by an alarming fraction of Republican party officials [1], which in my view is substantially driven by the influence those claims have on the Republican party base. I say that as someone who's leaned to the right for the past 20 years.

[1] See: "17 Republican Attorneys General Back Trump in Far-Fetched Election Lawsuit" (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/09/us/politics/trump-texas-s...) "Two reasons the Texas election case is faulty: flawed legal theory and statistical fallacy." (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/10/technology/texas-election...)

The debate of electing competent politicians is pretty old. Plato criticized democracy and advocated for rule by wise philosopher kings. In the 1900s it manifests as a debate in Europe where communism gives it a go. In more modern times, Singapore is more on the side of “meritocratic rule over people” than not.

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